The Effect of Stress Management Strategies of Athletes Studying in the Faculty of Sports Sciences on Their Athlete Self-Confidence

The aim of this research is to determine the stress coping strategies of athletes studying at the Faculty of Sports Sciences and to examine the relationship between these strategies and their levels of athletic self-confidence. A total of 353 athletes, 156 men and 197 women, participated in the study voluntarily. A three-part questionnaire was used as the data collection tool. The first section of the survey includes a personal information form regarding the demographic characteristics of the participants, the second section contains the Continuous Sports Confidence Inventory, and the third section contains the Strategies for Coping with Stress in Sports Inventory. The obtained data were analyzed using the SPSS 26 software package; in addition to descriptive statistics, independent samples t-test, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), and correlation analysis were applied. The research results show that as the level of sports confidence increases, athletes use task-oriented and social-based coping strategies more frequently; that sports confidence does not differ according to gender, age, education level, sport type, and smoking status, but varies significantly according to income level; and that while stress coping strategies do not differ according to gender, age, sport type, and smoking status, they show significant differences according to education and income levels.